“As we all know, Arkham Asylum is less than good at containing its more violent patients. Do you think Superman is justified in trying to permanently end the threats within its walls?”
I definitely don’t think so. I can understand the desire – while most of the Asylum doesn’t quite have the same body count as The Joker even before nuking Metropolis, a lot of them are still extremely dangerous and have caused a lot of human misery. But I think this is the moment where Superman really starts to edge into a tyrannical state of mind.
Ironically, I’m reminded of Kingdom Come, where Superman there had a more humane solution of creating his own prison for his foes. I mean, putting people in a ghulag is still pretty bad no matter how nice the conditions are, but at least the prisoners are still alive.
“Did Dick Grayson’s death surprise you?”
The death, no – if I remember right, it is implied within the game that Nightwing dies and that Damian had something to do with it. What surprised me about it was more the how of it. In a story like this, you would think the death would be in a last grand stand, a big, epic battle. But here, no. Dick just…fell and cracked his head open. It’s such a random…common death, which almost makes it more tragic.
“What do you think about this friendly Lex Luthor?”
I’m a smidge conflicted over it. On one hand, I usually like when alternate universes really play around and mix things up with their takes on the world on DC. On the other hand, making Lex a friend sort of feels like an easy out for why Superman flips the way he does. Like, “of course this happens, if Luthor in this world is more or less on the side of good, then it makes sense Superman would be a reverse.”
“What was your favorite moment?”
As someone who’s shipped these two since I started getting into these characters, getting Catwoman in there and her helping Bruce grieve was a great moment (the fact that it’s Superman who suggests for her to go help him is also good, shows that for all their problems, there’s still some love and care between the two former allies). The fact that from that point on she was his right hand was very fitting, and on that front, the moment where Bruce and Selina confront the President to make him do better was pretty fun.
Another good one was Kalibak going on about how Superman is weak because he refuses to take a life and that “oh s**t” look when he realizes that he’s facing a whole different Superman than he ever has before was just priceless. I just wish that there was more to that moment in the end than just making all the Parademons turning into pink mist. I was expecting Superman to perform a Mortal Kombat style fatality on Kalibak!